You all know about the Chevrolet Cavalier. You probably know about the Pontiac J2000/Sunbird, Buick Skyhawk, Oldsmobile Firenza and Cadillac Cimarron. There was also the Opel Ascona and Vauxhall Cavalier across the pond, and the Holden Camira down under. The Isuzu Aska may ring a gong, too. But the Daewoo Espero? Meet the forgotten J-Car, a South Korean-built version of GM’s erstwhile compact platform, styled by Bertone.

Despite the crisp styling by a design house most famous for the Fiat X1/9 and Maserati Khamsin, the Espero represents the old way of making a car in South Korea: Load a car up with kit and sell it for cheap. Like many Korean cars of its era, it owed a lot to a platform that had become obsolete. After all, the South Korean auto industry may now be a global juggernaut but it rose from humble beginnings. The Hyundai Motor Company started off making Ford Cortinas under license. Kia would sell Mazda castoffs for years after they had been discontinued by their parent company, including cars like the Kia Capital. And Daewoo’s early days were as a joint venture with General Motors, manufacturing the Maepsy (GM T-Car) and Royale (Opel Rekord).

Photo courtesy of Ilya Plekhanov

Daewoo would eventually start manufacturing the LeMans, a version of the Opel Kadett E. It was this model that would be the genesis of Daewoo’s global push, being introduced as the Pontiac LeMans in North America and New Zealand in the early 1990s. By 1995, Daewoo was arriving in Europe and Australia with the now decade-old LeMans, badged under myriad names like 1.5i, Nexia, Heaven, Racer and Cielo. The Espero would also arrive in those markets mid-decade, despite being first introduced in South Korea in 1990.

While its little brother was pitched as a budget rival to compact cars, the Espero was pitched as a blue-light special intermediate. Overall length was around 7 inches longer than the first-generation Chevy Cavalier sedan, with a 2-inch-longer wheelbase. Besides the 1982-vintage platform, the Espero also came equipped with a choice of three GM powerplants (depending on the market): 1.5-, 1.8- and 2.0-liter four-cylinder engines. Transmissions were an Aisin 5-speed manual or a 4-speed automatic.

photo courtesy of Juan Barret

Its exterior may have been a breath of fresh air in 1990, but by 1995 it was looking a little out of place amongst curvier, more organic designs. The interior, too, hadn’t aged like a fine wine. Still, the Espero appealed to bargain shoppers due to its low list price and proven mechanicals. You got what you paid for, though: Interior quality wasn’t a strong suit, and ride/handling was adequate at best.

The Espero would prove short-lived outside of South Korea. Daewoo would replace it with more clearly defined compact and intermediate offerings for 1997: the Nubira and Leganza. Like the Espero, they would also have European styling. And although they would be more fresh and modern, again, like the Espero, they would pose no credible threat to rivals other than in the value-for-money stakes.

42 Comments

I’d go a cut above “not bad” and say that it’s legitimately good-looking. Possibly the nicest styled variant of the original J platform. The greenhouse owes a lot to the Ford Scorpio, but still, it’s a fine-looking automobile.

Agree though that it was just too late for the market. Fresh styling can only go so far to camouflage outdated mechanicals. That anonymous interior isn’t helping matters either.

It reminds me a lot less of the Scorpio than of the Mazda HB Cosmo, especially with the curious glass C-pillar treatment. The Scorpio was really fairly orthodox-looking, but the Cosmo was almost weird enough to be French.

1st-gen Scorpio was the first thing that came to mind for me, partially as I’d never realized a 4-door hardtop version of the HB Cosmo even existed. They both glass over the C-pillar but the Cosmo’s treatment looks more unorthodox.

F30 Nissan Leopard also seems to have the same sort of thing going on.

I realize the roof treatment I was recalling was more the two-door HB, which has sort of an abstracted version of the previous Cosmo’s glass B-pillar, reduced to a separate pane of glass with a thin black frame. (That’s actually less pronounced on the four-door, where the sail panel is body-color.) But you see what I mean. The four-door Leopard isn’t nearly as odd — the F30’s greenhouse does look more like the later Scorpio’s, just a little more angular.

Looks like Daewoo had the same problem as all the cars that had yet to embrace the more flushed window modeling of the Taurus/Sable: overly complicated glass/ pillar surfaces along the sides– in this case, exacerbated by the shorter wheelbase requiring a fixed rear vent window. Would you say this car has a “D” pillar?

BTW, where’s the monorail? Looks like the ones by Kennedy and SeaTac, but the license plate says otherwise.

John is right. I photographed this Espero at the mall at Toombul in Brisbane, which is right next to the elevated Air Train link to the airport. And talk about CC effect, I spotted two more Esperos the day after!

This burgundy Espero looks just like the car that I regularly see in the parking lot near my house – same color etc. – with one exception, that one is completely rusty along the bottom, with fist-sized holes in doors and rocker panels. It wasn’t a bad looking car when it was introduced – well I must admit it still isn’t, but it’s ability to disintegrate into rusty bits was rivaled only by the Nexia and the Matiz (all fellow Daewoos) among foreign-built cars.

Didn’t know it was built on the J-Platform, thanks for the info. Must be the only J-Body car I see on a regular basis.

After 20 years (like it was yesterday) I remember when the Daewoo as a (new) brand had arrived to the old-continent. In some numbers these Esperos are still visible on the streets as the Nexias and Racers too. Their condition in general is quite acceptable with reasonable amount of rust. On the other hand the Kia Capital (old Mazda 626) has disappeared from the streets approx.10 years ago. Then I saw the last one…

Best looking Daewoo I ever saw was the Lacetti hatchback of about 10 years ago. Sold here as the Suzuki Reno. Function apparently didn’t live up to the form. I saw a test in C&D where, among other niggles, they complained the shift linkage felt like it was made of “bungee cords and plastic forks”

I had an 86 Cavalier 1.6[U.K.] pretty much a stripper,went like the clappers sipped fuel and to my mind looked refined .It is the only car I regret parting with.In the UK I think GM missed a trick with the Espero which they could have badged as a Cavvy,the successor Vectra was portly ,nowhere near as engaging as the Cavalier.

GMH made the engines for these things at Fishermans Bend and exported them to Korea, Aussie has a very restricted car market so most of the Desperos forebears never showed up making them think these were actually new cars yet underneath was the same crap cart Holden Camira hated almost universally.

In my opinion one of best looking cars, rumours about Daewoo said, that they collect italian projects rejected by big players – Espero was based on one of Citroen Xantia concept, Matiz on FIAT 500 and Leganza on Jaguar 🙂

It’s funny because this car must be he second most common J car for me, after the Brazilian Chevrolet Monza (and before the Chilean built Chevrolet Aska). These were popular, as was Daewoo. I Never paid much attention to them, but they are very handsome.

I was surprised to read the Espero came out in 1990. Googling, I found a reference that said they first came to Chile in 1993. Still, I wonder if Daewoo might have been prevented from exporting them before because of some clause of the agreement with GM?

* Is the Cavalier from the 90s also a J car? Then the Espero would be 3rd in my list.

They look like the originals to me, the hubcaps on the main feature car are aftermarket.

Learning these cars were originally released in 1990 explains why some details seemed a bit off by 1995. Overall they are a nice-looking car, but that is as close as I ever got. I always regarded these and Kias of the same era as a sign the owner did not care about driving, because all but the most optimistic cheapskates recognised that the purchase price was not the only thing cheap about the car, and that they represented poor value.

The car is Korean, NOT Japanese… First of all, Archie Bunker. Anyway, the Espero looks like a 1st gen Taurus, Merkur/Ford Scorpio and a Mazda based Ford Telstar all in one …. It definitely has Ford genes inspired in the design.

I looked into buying one of these in Korea in about 1998, through a dodgy English-speaking “car agent”.
Turns out it was 2 years arrears in road taxes and hence, unregisterable and uninsurable. “Don’t worry, it will be fine for just driving around” I ran.
If Len is reading this, I’m sure he has seen all the shenagigans that Waygooks indulge in with untaxed, uninsured vehicles being passed from person to person in Korea,
Me, I keep it all legal, inspections, taxes, insurance, legal title, etc, and on top of it all, I actually maintained my cars with oil changes etc. My loss was someone else’s gain.
I actually like the looks of these, but the interior is awful. Imagine that odd, clamshell 2-piece G1 Lumina dash, except made with conversion-van level materials.

I always found the rear window treatment on these cars a bit messy – distinctive, but too busy. There is only one I see on a regular basis these days, and that one was imported from England. Daewoo officially came onto our market in 1994 (but a demo Espero was running around a full year before that), and by 2002 most of the Esperos had disappeared or were on their last legs.

If only we didn’t have to rely on other countries to build our cars. This is perhaps the best looking Daewoo I’ve ever seen; unfortunately, I’ve been told that Daewoo makes the worst quality cars ever. That someone would buy the cheapest made cars Daewoo makes and then re-badge them with other names, like Chevrolet, Vauxhall, Holden, etc.

I’m surprised that nearly everyone likes this! I do too, but I think it’s also a profoundly strange looking car… maybe just because I’m trying so hard to see a 1990 Cavalier while looking at it (my brain also wants to call it the “Esperanto”). First impression was: Rover 400 with Nissan 240SX taillights attached somehow, but I see a lot of the influences mentioned up above on second glance too. I think AUWM is likely correct in suggesting that the “fakeout/glass pillar” was inspired by the Cosmo. In any case, it’s a real shocker to learn that Daewoo was building something with styling this ambitious in the early ’90s. It’s, by far, the most visually interesting J-body from that era. The dash and interior design even looks pretty good, although you can tell from the picture that it’s cheap cheap cheap plastic. Wikipedia says the automatic transmission on the Espero was an Aisin 4-speed OD – something that wasn’t even available on American J-bodies until 1996, and then only with the optional DOHC engine. It’d be really interesting to drive one of these back-to-back with a Pontiac Sunbird of the same vintage (which had the same/similar 2.0 engine) and see how they compare.

Daewoo Espero was a best seller in Brazil. Arrived in 1994, it was the first accessible car with automatic gearbox and the first experience for a massive amount of Brazilian owners. As it shared almost all components with the local J-car Chevrolet Monza, Espero was far easier to maintain with local made parts if compared to any other imported car at that time (the still remaining ones today are more Chevrolet than Daewoo…) a Daewoo dealerships in Curitiba – PR was famous for have a big stock of exclusive parts of Espero which helped people to keep their Esperos longer than other perishable Korean cars.
Espero and Citroën Xantia have exactly the same design from B-pillars to front fenders and bumpers.